Chris Weimer

Gnosticism is not "mythical" Christianity.

We have much more than early Gnostic material. We especially have Paul who has insight into first century Christianity outside his own, and it's nothing like Gnosticism. In fact, it's the opposite. It's Judaism.

Moreso. For Paul, it's the resurrection that saves. For Oxy. Thomas, it's the secret words. But the content is much more in line with proto-Orthodox than the real Gnostics.

What you posited and what you later made out to be your argument are two different things.

What connects the two?

What evidence is there of that?

Unlike Doherty, Wells has published in reputable journals. Just not enough of his theories.

That's the truest thing you said, in more ways than one.

I said the Dutch Radicals were out of touch with reality, not that all this was ridiculous. I find the evidence strongly in favor of an HJ, and often wonder why good evidence for MJ isn't used?

But that's not mythicism ala Doherty or even Wells. It's Gnosticism. You're being unclear here.

Obviously not - he's left no writings!

Michael Grant anyone?

I disagree! Biblical Studies examines the unique position of early Christianity and early Judaism in its surrounding environments. It's more of a study of the cultural impact of those two religions than what BS was back in the heyday. You ought to look into what Hector Avarlos has said, tho.

Many are! Many programs, like U. Chicago, is actually ANE programs. Bible courses even at the undergrad level in major institutions all have some component of comparativism included.

Funny thing to hear coming from a non-specialist.

This is a joke.

Nah, I have real work to do. HJ is a distraction. Maybe soon, though. And yes, amice, I've read Detering.

No Robots

There are problems with this assertion. Most importantly, Gnosticism was a Jewish movement (see here).

Chris Weimer

Yes, well, it wasn't classicaly defined by Judaisticism. It wasn't akin to the Ebionites, whom I think are the descendents of the James group.

Clivedurdle

Gurugeorge - excellent op.

My reaction was Pagels - the Gnostic Paul - would find this debate very interesting. I actually do not see much if any difference. Why are they not very similar?

Which model HJ would that be we are discussing today?

As I have said elsewhere it is a huge assumption to think xianity has ever believed in an HJ - A pope did call that a heresy. They believe explicitly that Jesus Christ is the Son of God - fully man - fully god. May we please take these beliefs seriously at face value?

Then by definition the xian Jesus is mythical - a godman who can walk on water and resurrect. It then becomes a second question - are we looking at an equivalent to an emperor being deified like Augustus or myth all the way down? The evidence is very strongly myth all the way down.

gurugeorge

Well it depends on how you look at it. I think the kind of early mythical Christianity Earl is talking about is what developed into Gnosticism. If we take the Gnostics version of apostolic succession seriously then there's a line from Paul to Gnosticism. (Incidentally this might also somewhat address Earl's qualms about "what happened to Pauline Christianity in the interm"?)

I disagree, I think the only real difference between Paul's proto-Gnosticism and the Jerusalem community is the universalism. To me it looks like the same visionary revision of the Messiah idea, only Paul thinks it's for everybody. It's a development or outgrowth of Judaism/Samaritanism - but even Pharisaic Judaism wasn't how it's described in the gospels (one of the clues showing they must mostly be post-70, maybe even post-130). Judaism may have even been less "monotheistic" (in some ways) at that time.

OK, but not just the sheer fact of some supposed resurrection in the flesh of someone who'd lived shortly before him; rather, a resurrection the devotee has to enact somehow. The resurrection he's talking about is clearly a spiritual matter. (If you can point out much of a difference between Paul's discussion of resurrection in Corinthians and the Epistle to Rheginus, please do so. They seem to be pretty much the same kind of resurrection.)

Also, one ought to be suspicious of the orthodox critique of "secret knowledge", it could be just sour grapes. There's evidence in the Epistles of stuff that must have been taught that's not taught openly in the Epistles themselves (the "prophecy", "knowledge" and "faith", that are involved in Christian get-togethers, the thing about the "Third Heaven"), but the very fact that they're alluded to in the letters shows that knowledge wasn't necessarily secret in the sense of reserved for a few.

What I think Gnostics meant by "secret" was "self-secret" - i.e. you can talk about it quite openly and verbosely (as, after all, the Gnostics did!), but people won't understand what your referent is unless they've had the relevant experiences themselves. But this was misunderstood by the proto-orthodox to mean some kind of reserved, secret knowledge for a few.

Well I don't know about that, but yes I agree it's not got as much Gnosticism as the Coptic version.

Why are you asking me? You've read Detering's essay haven't you? :devil1:

I mean that's a function such a split would fulfil. Bear in mind this is against the background of evident distress amongst the proto-orthodox (starting from, e.g. Ignatius), the signs of struggle against something already established wherever they go, talked about by W Bauer.

Go on then, you've finally said something interesting - what is the good evidence you see that's not being used?

I may be being unclear in my exposition, but I think I've stressed several times that I'm talking about the morphing and mitosis of one thing into other things: first the split between the Jerusalem Jews-only (disappointed-apocalyptic/proto-Gnostic) version of Christ and Paul's universalised (definitely proto-Gnostic, mystical, visionary) version which he spread all over the area, then the early splitting off of one of those proto-Gnosticisms, into proto-orthodoxy (taking a hardened historical view of the cultic entity because it's useful for them in order to establish a better sense of "apostolic succession" than the other Christians have), then the development of the other proto-Gnosticisms into sundry Gnosticisms (becoming less Jewish, taking on more and more Hellenistic, Asian and Egyptian elements); then the rise of proto-orthodoxy; the decline of the original Jewish forms and their morphing into Ebionites; the eventual acceptance of most Gnostics of the proto-orthodox "apostolic succession" and the subsequent morphing of Gnosticism into docetism; the end of docetism.

I mean, it all makes perfect sense - what's not to like? As I said, of course I do understand that coherence alone doesn't establish truth, but I think if people did research with a picture like this in mind, the evidence would be seen in a new light and make much more sense.

That's what I was thinking of actually.

That's good to hear.

Oh I get it, everybody else has to work like a bitch to satisfy your preference for nitty-gritty evidence, and if they don't they're obviously know-nothing idiots, but you're exempt because you "have real work to do"? :notworthy:

gurugeorge

Hehe, well you picked up on the one glaring (gaping? ) abyss in my story. I didn't mention the gospels at all and where they fit in. I think this is difficult because I don't fully trust the way the gospels are viewed at the moment, because so much of how they are viewed is tied in with Acts being understood as pretty good history.

What I'm toying with is, again, taking the Gnostic (and Marcionite) understanding more seriously, and viewing Luke (or rather some kind of gospel that was later turned into Luke) as being earlier. (It's acknowledged that there's at least some material in Luke that's earlier, and the lack of organisation compared to Mark might itself be a sign that Mark is a reworking of something earlier.)

But even if we take Mark as earliest, it's still possible it could be no earlier than 130 CE and that would fit in with my story.

At any rate, I think the gospels that were floating around early on were probably sketchier, and that they subsequently developed into something like the gospels we know (plus others).

My basic, outline wrt the gospels is that they are various attempts to fill in the gap that suddenly exists when the Jewish Messiah is construed as an entity that's been and done his work, instead of an entity that's to come in the future and do his work. That's the basic "twist" I see the original Christians as having invented, that plus the combination with the growing idea of an intermediary between the individual and divine (a function of cosmopolitanisation in the Hellenistic period - i.e. local cults are less isolated, seen more relativistically, so there's a search for something that links the individual to the divine, rather than the local group to the divine).

So there's this cute temporal inversion, that's the Big Idea. But that Big Idea invites speculation - "well if he's been, when did he come? and where exactly?" I think initially the idea may have been pretty loosely interpreted, either in a fairly distant past (e.g. Hebrews, perhaps a la Wells) or recent past (probably the Jerusalem crew and Paul) and may even be wholly spiritual (sublunar) a la Doherty. But for reasons I'm not clear on, the story as an initiatory understanding (i.e. an understanding that encapsulates theological, visionary and mystical aspects of this new Christ idea) starts to crystallise from "once upon a time" into "in the fairly recent past". Eventually a basic "sketch" that makes sense to all Christians of various types then (probably not many of them around at that stage) develops (whatever proto-gospels were floating around from 50-70 CE, probably Luke-like). It's after the diaspora that the story starts to take on a realistic, sort of nostalgic weight. I think the first gospels as we know them to form were Mark closely followed by Matthew (post 130 CE). Even at that stage, it's probably fair to say that many of the Christians who used those gospels viewed them more mythically than "hard" historically in the way the proto-orthodox thought of them. It's the proto-orthodox take on the gospels (necessitated by their attempt to trump the Pauline/visionary/proto-Gnostic apostolic succession, in order to gain political and psychological ascendancy over their fellows) that interprets the story in a historically "hard" way (i.e. in a way that makes him definitely a human being - who was also God - linked to human beings linked to human beings linked to human beings .... linked to contemporary proto-orthodox bishops).

But I'm well aware that this is terribly vague, sketchy and speculative, and has far less backing from scholarship, to my own mind, than the broader historical outline of my OP.

gurugeorge

Agreed. Gstafleu has some good distinction about this.

Clearly Jesus was real to the early Christians, and "historical" at least in a mythical sense (like "Dionysus born of Semele" or Hercules), either in a vague or recent past (and this doesn't contradict Doherty's "sublunar" angle given the fuzziness of myth); but to show either that they believed he was historical in our sense (as the orthodoxy believed), or that he actually was historical in our sense, are different matters, and are not at all shown clearly by the evidence. It's possible, and the evidence can be read either way with a bit of "epicyclic" maneouvering, but HJ-ers are so used to that kind of maneouvering that they don't see it as "epicyclic", and don't see that the "myth all the way down" (with a fuzzy range of historicity in various kinds of Christianity) is the simpler, more likely explanation.

Chris Weimer

Sorry, I don't have a lot of time today, but...

I'm not the one pushing alternative theories here, am I? You've set yourself up with the burden of proof. Now, if you were to ask me about the Gospel of Matthew or Catullus, then we can get started.

gurugeorge

Re. "burden of proof", see the other thread

EarlDoherty

And here is a good example of the depth of serious research which historians like Michael Grant indulge in to arrive at the opinion that an HJ existed. From my website article "Alleged Scholarly Refutations of Jesus Mythicism":

And if you want to get some idea of the quality of argument put forward by those historians/biblical scholars who have devoted some serious effort to defending the HJ over the course of the 20th century, see that website article. The paucity of rational, scientific and effective defense by the few that have made that attempt will amaze you.

Earl Doherty